


lungs full of water

by winterbones



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Desert Island, F/M, Rating will change, brief mention of Hook/Emma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 12:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the simple task of returning a wayward queen home takes a turn for the worst, when the Jolly Roger is destroyed in a storm, and Killian and Aurora are left stranded on an island that's more than it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lungs full of water

_“water water every where  
nor any drop to drink”_  
-Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Killian woke to the chorus of waves crashing into his ears, a dissonant aria coupled with the icy spray of salt water slapping bitterly against his cheeks. He groaned and swallowed a mouthful of seawater. He came to gasping, spurting life, thrashing up above the water, fingers sinking into wet sand. Killian felt akin to driftwood, waterlogged and heavy, and when he glanced over his shoulder he could still see the black plume of smoke from his ship curling lazily into the grey, cloudy sky.

Cursing, he slogged his way out of the tide onto the shore. Seafoam gave chase, sweeping at his boots, as if trying to entice him to return. He saluted it with his finger. He pushed himself to his ungainly, swaying feet and sucked in hard gulps of air, his lips still stinging with the bite of salt. Fat, heavy droplets of water splattered along his sodden coat and he stripped it off and tossed the wreckage of leather to the sand.

Cupping his hands over his mouth he called, “Hey ho!” down the shoreline. The only answer was waves against rocks.

The island was a lonely place, despite the towering trees beyond the beach. Perhaps it was only because of the morning grey clouds shrouding the sun and overcastting the colors of the beach scene. Killian sloshed his way down the shoreline, searching for signs of life other than the caw of a bird in the distance.

He found two crewmembers, one smashed bloodily against a rock outcropping, and the other swollen and plum two miles down. The one caught on the rocks was barely identifiable and Killian loosened the body, sending it back into the waves and out to sea. He crouched beside the other, flipping it over. He recognized the crotchety cook beneath the purpled bloat and distended, bruised veins. He closed the man’s eyes as best as he could—no mean feat, since his skin had puffed around his eyes—and sent him into the sea, too. The water took care of its own, one way or the other. The only prayer he offered were the two fingers he lifted to his temple—Davey Jones would see to the rest.

Watching the bodies bob and weave like buoys in the waves, he could have damned the storm, but that was a pirate’s lot in life—they traded the solidarity of land, the predictability of it, for the mercurial nature of the water, which would give and take in equal measures depending on its mood. Was it no wonder pirates were romantics at heart? The sea was as fickle and loving as a woman.

Sighing, scrubbing a salt-crusted hand down his face, Killian went in search of a sopping princess.

 

 

 

 

He found her among another outcropping further down the beach. The little princess seemed to have surfaced from unconsciousness enough to half yank herself onto the top rock’s plateau, but when Killian came across her she was motionless, the water making the gossamer silk of her gown dance sluggishly around her pale legs.

It was kin to being electrocuted, as if the last bit of seaweed was yanked from slugging his mind and he remembered—he was under strict orders to return the queen to her recently restored, gleaming kingdom. As Emma Swan’s occasional bed-warmer he couldn’t say no—though that was getting rather tiresome in and of itself; since he was certain Emma spent most of it thinking of darker hair and smoother skin and there was irony in the Snow White’s daughter dreaming of an evil queen, but Killian didn’t find it amusing when it meant he had a lackluster bed partner.

If he returned without a drowned almost-queen he was certain a swift beheading would be a boon compared to other punishments.

His jackboots slapped noisily against the rocks as he scrambled up it, yanked at the woman. She flopped unceremoniously on the flat top, limp as a ragdoll. Kneeling, he shoved the wet tangle of her from her face. Her skin was like smooth, cold marble, her lips rimmed with a dangerous amount of pale blue.

“Bollocks,” he muttered, voice grating out. He tilted her chin, thumb to the slight indent to part her lips, and pressed his mouth to her, forcing air into her stilled lungs. He drove a fisted hand into her sternum, a rougher treatment than any he’d wager the princess had suffered before, but if he could jumpstart her lungs and her heart he’d expect a thank you in the end.

She came to with a rough, hacking gasp, shoving at him like attempting to fight off death. Killian scooted away enough for her to heave to the side, spitting up the last of the bitter water in her body. He watched the long shudder race through her as the taste made her retch. Not a good thing, that, as she would dehydrate faster, but he couldn’t blame.

“What,” the princess-queen croaked, “what happened?”

Killian remembered the streak of lightning, like an arrow being shot by a laughing god, igniting the mizzenmast and sending it crashing down down down, and somewhere in the middle of it all was Princess Aurora’s cry of horror at the naturally beautiful violence.

“Shipwreck,” he said succinctly, and with that he laid the _Jolly Roger_ to rest, its bones its grave at the bottom of the deep blue, a shrine to the greed and rage of Mother Nature. “We need to find water.”

 

 

 

 

Aurora asked, once, about the crew but Killian’s silence must have been answer enough and she shied away from the train of thoughts. Best to leave the dead buried, in Killian’s opinion anyway, and he didn’t like to think about puffed out, water-dense bodies and purpling skin. By the time he had lead her back to where he had awoken, the sun had won its battle with the clouds and beamed hotly down on their backs, making a low, hissing noise to mock them.

This was no desert heat, as he was sure Aurora was used to. Instead, it clung wetly to their skin, cloying and sticky, teeming humidity that chaffed where his leathers brushed his skin. He had already stripped to his waist and had silenced Aurora’s missish protest with one raised brow. She was more than welcome to trample about in her stays and her petticoats, but he wasn’t wasting his energy battling the heat _and_ his clothing.

It was indeed a testament to the stubborn nature of queens that Aurora resolutely kept her corset tightly laced. It was a frothy confection of lace and silk, her gown, the color of a red sunset, and he recognized the loose wear of the Ishtari fashion in her skirt—the Ishtari were a strange lot, them, preferring their near see-through fabrics mated with the confines of whale-boned corsets. It did make for a thrilling appeal, just enough tantalization to make a man want to peel a cantankerous princess out of her gown and see if the texture of her skin matched her pretty dress. The heat alone made the air thick and oppressive and he couldn’t imagine the burden of trying to breathe it in through the constriction of stays, but if she insisted he wouldn’t expend the energy in an argument.

“The others will come looking for us, won’t they?” Aurora asked, dunking under a low hanging branch, scowling down at the muddied hemline of her gown.

“Since I’m in possession of the kingdom of the sands’ heir—yes. Eventually, but unfortunately they have to realize something happened first.” And this island was not on any of his maps, and there were quite a few of them dotting the Jade Sea that looped around Ishtar’s backside—no point in mentioning that.

His feel the heat of Aurora’s glare on his back. Well, the princess never hid her distaste of him—well earned, of course, because Killian never did anything in half measures. He could still remember the bizarre weight of her heart in his palm, the way the blushing illusion of an organ had pulsed against his fingers, as if struggling to be real. But he had Queen Snow White’s pardon for that, and for a good number of other things that should have sent him on his merry way to the gallows, too.

All he had to do was give up his crocodile-skin boots. Killian was still bitter over that, but Rumpelstiltskin stripped of power and left to cool his heels in forsaken Storybrooke would have to be enough to slake that thirst he had for revenge.

Water crashing against rocks detangled him from his thoughts and Aurora streaked out from around him. It was a lovely sight, the vegetation curled intimately around the lagoon, the three-story high waterfall raising a white mist from where it hit the rippling water. As the princess gingerly lifted her sweat-damp hair from the back of her neck to dab the clear water on her skin, Killian peeled his boots from his feet, tossing them to the rocks dangling over the lagoon. He crouched beside it, cupped his hands in the clear, still water and lifted it to his parched lips.

And immediately spat it out with a low, “ _Fuck_.”

Aurora was at his side almost instantaneously, gripping his shoulders, her pale face pinched with alarm. “What?” she demanded. “Hook, what is it?”

His fist slammed into the water, kicking up a wall of wake. “Salt,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s salt water.” He rocked back on his heels, scrubbing a hand down his face, the muscles his jaw cracking. “Don’t drink it. Won’t do any good.” The bitter stung the insides of his mouth, biting into his gums.

“Salt water?” Aurora parroted, glancing at the innocuous lagoon. “But—”

“Ocean water must have bled into the fresh water, contaminated it,” Killian explained.

“Might there be other lagoons?” Aurora asked, standing and glancing around at the teeming jungle. “All the foliage here is thriving. It couldn’t do that without freshwater. There has to be some somewhere.”

Hope springs eternal with the little queen, Killian thought, for the first time in years wishing he had that sort of optimism. But he had a sinking suspicion in the pit of his stomach that that would not be the case, and he was a damnable fortune in being right.

 

 

 

 

The island wasn’t very large, and by the time they had trekked from one end of the jungle and back again, all they had done was waste valuable energy. The handful of streams they had found all the same—mockingly salty to Killian’s lips. He had had the notion to boil the water pure, but the few hand-sized rocks he had managed to scavenge did little on wet wood. Everything here was wet, a farce of their necessity. Killian tossed the stone flints as far as he could manage into the roiling waves, standing in the sand with his legs spread and his fisted hand pressed into his hip.

Aurora set cross-legged into the sand. A startling moment of charity had Killian relinquishing one of the leather strings of his vest and she had used it to bun up her hair at the base of her neck, tawny wisps clinging wetly to the sides of her face. Her stays remained stubbornly in place, but any pique Killian might have felt at being denied a glimpse at the princess’s bountiful flesh was stifled by the pounding of the waves on the rocks, a funeral psalm that made the hair on back of his neck raise in retaliation.

The princess had also claimed his discarded jacket as her booty, and laid out like a blanket beneath her. Rot it would do her, but Killian didn’t have the energy to argue. If she wanted to play queen of this piss-sized island, she was welcome to.

“They’ll find us,” Aurora said, raising her voice over the sound of rushing waves. “That’s what they do.”

Killian said nothing, because there was nothing to say, and he stared out into the horizon-line, where the sun played black as ink over the motions of the water.

 

 

 

 

Eventually, Killian joined her on the sand, long legs tossed haphazardly into the sound. The leather chaffed, but any attempts to strip had results in a solid thwack from Aurora, and Killian had decided to grin and bear it for the time being. His mouth, little less than a day in, was already dry as dust.

Every pirate had this fear, of this death—there was no worse fate for a man on a sea than to die from deprivation of water. To be surrounded by the poisoned illusion of it. He traced patterns in the sun—a starburst here, clusters of nautical symbols there, a star chart that he had memorized in his youth.

Aurora stared stubbornly out at the sea.

“A watched pot never boils,” Killian told her, mapping out Orion’s belt, thumb grinding down into the sand.

The little would-be queen twisted her head away from the siren call of the waves.

 

 

 

 

High tide rose in and they moved to the outcropping of rocks. Killian forwent mention of the two bodies he had found there. Theirs might end up being the kinder fate in the end. He slept the first night, Aurora bundled up in his coat. It was far from cold, despite the bitter spray, but he could hear her teeth chattering throughout the night. He woke with crescents indented into his palm, the joints in his knuckles popping from being stiffly locked into a fist.

Water had eroded a rut into their rocky bed, and enough had collected there to resist the evaporation of the baking sun. Killian watched blearily as Aurora drew her fingers through the small, shallow pool, making the stagnant water ripple sluggishly. Her free hand propped up her chin as she blinked at the water. Killian’s hook made a clacking sound as it tapped against the stone, a harsh silver under the sunlight. Aurora hadn’t seemed to be surprised that it hadn’t rusted, but then again—she was a princess with a perchance to be spelled, and she had probably just assumed some sort of magic kept it pristine despite the wear of over three hundred years; she’d be right.

“Don’t,” he said suddenly, gripping her wrist with and dragging it from the water.

Aurora turned her head so slowly Killian swore her heard her bones popping, like a marionette who had been too long shelved. “What?”

“Don’t touch it.” His dry tongue swept over his puffed lips, aching for any sort of moisture. “Soon you’ll get into that pretty little head of yours that one sip of anything won’t do you any harm—anything to slake your thirst. Best to keep yourself from temptation, rather than try to resist it.”

The little queen stared at him.

“Nothing’s worse than watching someone die of drinking water,” Killian added.

She curled her fingers into a small fist and rested it against her chest and laid down on her back. She tilted her face up toward the clear, blue sky. The tears leaking from the corners of her eyes were as saline as the sea stretching endlessly around them, so he didn’t mention it.

 

 

 

 

“I was fascinated by the sea when I was younger,” Aurora commented, her voice cracking over the words as they came up her throat as dry as ashes. “The Jade Sea borders Ishtar but it’s a journey to Portstown. I’ve only seen it a handful of times, the sunlight looks like tossed jewels on the waves. It had always seemed so beautiful.”

Not anymore, Killian imagined.

“Beauty is cruel more often than not,” he said, voice grating out. He hacked on the mucus congealed at the back of his throat. “I would think you, of all people, to know that best of all, Your Highness.”

She did not answer to that and when Killian glanced over at her she was still. He reached out a hand to the small of her back to check to see if she moved, and Aurora shuddered as if the light touch of his palm was an anchor laid on her spine. The breath he had been unwittingly holding released in a slow hiss and his hand retreated.

Of her quivering shoulders he had nothing to say. He’d always been rather rubbish at being sentimental, or comforting, and besides what could he say to lessen the knowledge that the pressure they both felt, bearing down on their chests, was death? That they would die on this lonesome isle, baked to a fine, charred crisp under an apathetic sun. That did not example the odd churning of acid in his gut at the awareness that she was stifling her cries beneath her trembling hands. He wanted to punch something, but there was nothing here but open air.

 

 

 

 

Killian stripped his leather breeches and tossed them aside, letting them cook beneath the heat of the sun. He was bare as the day he was born beneath, but Aurora offered no token protest this time. No matter, he supposed, since his bollocks had likely shriveled up to the size of prunes—he’d not been able to muster the courage to peek. It rankled him that Aurora had not objected. Her priggish nature was the stuff of legends.

He glanced over at her, licking his blistered, chapped lips. Aurora had somehow even managed to loosen her stays when he had been looking and the red, flimsy tatters were sagging around her, giving her the appearance of a drowned bird just dragged free of the water before death. Her face was tilted toward the clear, cloudless sky and he could see the blisters of sun on her cheeks, small splotched of bright, red irritation.

It was an odd spurt of anger that gave him energy enough to lean over and toss the long sleeve of his jacket across her face. Aurora lifted a hand and pushed it away, sluggishly turned her head to blink owlishly at him.

“Cover up,” he commanded, voice scrapped out of his throat. He hacked up a cough dry as dust, his saliva tasting of brine and sea-salt. “If you’re going to insist on laying like that.”

Aurora lifted a hand to the circle of sunburn, to where her skin cracked and peeled a dull yellow, ringed in distended blisters.

“What’s it matter?” she asked quietly, fingers moving across her abused flesh. A small trickle of blood rolled down her cheek as a blister burst. “We’re going to die here.”

“Well, if you’re going to have an attitude like that,” Killian muttered sourly, “I’ll take myself to the other side of the island.”

There was no answer, and Killian swallowed roughly, tasting bile build up at the back of his throat. He wanted to snarl—at her, at the island, at the damn sun. The blemishes on her ivory skin hazed his vision over with a thick, liable coating of red. She was a queen in every sense of the word and when they finally recovered their bodies they’d find her a husk, blistered and bruised and red and they probably wouldn’t even recognize her as the Princess Aurora, just think her an unfortunate soul dead on some deserted island.

He kicked out his naked legs, cursing, but when he glanced back over at her, he saw that Aurora had carefully laid the tails of his jacket across her face, blocking it from the heat of the sun.

 

 

 

 

The next sleep he fell into was no real sleep at all. It was a death-sleep, and he would have quietly slipped into a coma and sweet, merciful oblivion for not for the prickle on the back of his outstretched hand. It felt like little pinchers poking and pinching his skin and with a grown, he dragged himself away from death’s gate to crack open a sleep-crusted eye and stare at the bird canting its head in curiosity at him.

Its black wings trembled, a biting juxtaposition to its snowy white body. Beady black eyes blinked at him as it used its webbed feet to hop closer to him, beak tipping to pick at the papery skin on the back of his hand.

“Ow,” Killian said, the sound grating out—more a growl than a syllable. He mustered up the strength and reached for it. The bird did nothing as Killian wrapped his hand around its body. It was hardly a meaty fare, and he was lacking the energy to even be hungry, but he could feel the pulse of blood and the beat of his heart—liquid; he yearned above all things for liquid.

And he was angry, so angry, and Aurora was still on her side of the rock, the only movement the ruffle of her hair in the breeze floating off the sea, and suddenly he was so angry he couldn’t see straight, vision waving in red, fuzzy hues. His fingers bit into the bird’s body, compressing delicate, hollow bones. It was silent and staring at him.

Something curled around Killian’s wrist, and he twisted his chin enough to look down into Aurora’s pale, white face. Her lips were cracked, blood caking the cut on her puckered mouth. “Don’t,” she said hoarsely.

He gave the bird a shake. “Why not?”

“It hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Neither have you,” Killian pointed out, his teeth grinding down. “And yet—here you are.”

“Please,” Aurora entreated, moisture sheening her glossy, lackluster eyes. That blue used to be so vibrant, but it was as if the sun had leeched it from her. “Let it go.”

Quietly, slowly, Killian did. The bird finally made a sound, squawking as it hobbled on one foot, unfurling its wings and taking to the sky. Its birdsong was an aberrant psalm that made Killian’s heart wretch for unknown reasons.

“Thank you,” Aurora murmured beside him. He didn’t look at her.

 

 

 

 

Killian drifted in one last half-daze, blinking his dry, crusted eyes. The moon winked down at him, the waves softening to gently lapping at the rock. He swallowed, and there was no more saliva in his throat.

Aurora lay quiet, her shiverings having stopped some time ago. Killian reached for her, his arms screaming in agonized protest as he dragged her closer. Aurora went with a weak mewl of pain, turning sluggishly as he secured the last distance between them.

They didn’t speak, but Killian thought that if he was doing to die—here, on this godforsaken rock—he’d do so grasping something bright and fine in his greedy, grubby hands. One last hoorah against the common decency of the world.

His mouth moved through the caramel tossed curls that lay just below his chin. Somehow he caught the scent of summer blossoms and cool freshwater still lingering in her locks. That may have just been the madness of water depravation.

Aurora’s little hand curled tightly against his naked chest, her forehead pressed into the hollow of his neck. She said nothing.

Well, Killian thought, eyes drooping closed, as far as dying went, it wasn’t so bad—his arm full of a beautiful woman. It could be worse. He opened his mouth and pushed his lips into her hair, inhaling the saccharine scent of her, and letting the last, final darkness swallow him.

 

 

 

 

“Wake up!” Aurora sang into his ear his, her voice silvery and light. “Killian, wake up!”

He did. A pregnant splash of water splattered against his cheeks, a droplet catching in his lashes as they fluttered against his skin. Aurora’s beaming face materialized above him, and he noticed that her hair was plastered to the sides of her face and a line of water trickled alone her jaw-line, pooling in the hollow her throat. He reached out and pressed his fingers to the water—it was cold against his fingertips.

“Look,” Aurora said, voice almost lost over the sound of pattering raindrops. She tilted her head to the swollen, grey sky. “It’s _raining_.”

Killian opened his mouth and cool, wet water plopped in. He swallowed greedily and leveled himself up on his elbows. Aurora climbed to her feet, arms opened as if to embrace the sky. Water sluiced down her body, plastering her chemise against her skin. Killian found himself staring hungrily at the ivory flesh hinted through the thin fabric. His health, Killian decided, dropping his gaze, was definitely improving.

Aurora streaked down the beach, kicking up sand and surf, spinning as she called out her glee. Killian watched from his perch on the rock outcropping, his hair slicked with the rain. The little queen had never been so uninhibited, but he supposed he could understand. He was close to doing a merry jig, except that he wasn’t keen on having his junk bouncing about.

He was in the middle yanking his wet leather when Aurora rushed back up the rock, all but tripping in her haste, laughing the whole way.

“We’re alive,” she said him, sounding not unlike a conquering general.

“So we are.”

“ _Alive_ ,” she repeated and then, for no reason at all, cupped his face in her smooth, small palms and pressed her cold lips to his.

It was nearly world-shattering.


End file.
